Humans of Martech 215: How to find hidden job opportunities (The Martech job hunt survival guide, part 1)
Build Side Income And AI Projects
- Start freelance or side projects to create income and demonstrable work, especially AI prototypes.
- Darrell suggests small paid gigs or AI experiments that you can show in interviews to answer “what have you done with AI?”.
AI Skills Signal Operational Value More Than Revenue
- Employers increasingly ask for AI experience but most AI wins are internal process improvements, not direct revenue.
- Interviewers ask for measurable AI results, so prototypes or internal-efficiency examples sell better than vague tool talk.
Local Candidates Often Beat Remote Star Resumes
- The 2026 market is hypercompetitive due to big-tech layoffs and remote candidate pools, making logos and locality decisive factors.
- Candidates local to on-site roles win because many applicants are remote and excluded by proximity.
What's up everyone, today we kick off part 1 of a 3 part series we’re calling The Martech Job Hunt Survival Guide. Part 1 is: How to find hidden job opportunities.
In This Episode:
- (00:00) - Intro
- (01:23) - In This Episode
- (01:59) - Sponsor: Knak
- (03:06) - Sponsor: MoEngage
- (04:49) - Why Getting Laid Off Is Always a Business Decision
- (08:52) - Building Career Security Before You Need It
- (10:51) - Networking Before You Need Anyone's Help
- (24:29) - Building Your Dream Company List Before the Job Search Starts
- (27:04) - Sponsor: Mammoth Growth
- (28:07) - Sponsor: RevenueHero
- (29:01) - Why AI Side Projects Give You a Real Edge in Job Interviews
- (34:50) - The 2026 Martech Job Market Reality Check
- (42:18) - The Ashby Search Hack and Why Referrals Beat Job Applications
- (49:58) - Hidden Job Boards and Staffing Firms Most Candidates Ignore
- (53:52) - Finding Martech Jobs at Stealth Startups Using VC Funding Alerts
- (55:31) - Why Fast-Growing Martech Agencies Are an Underrated Hiring Path
Summary: This episode is a full playbook for martech and marketing ops professionals navigating 1 of the toughest job markets in years. Phil and Darrell cover what to build before you ever need a job: network, dream company lists, freelance income, AI side projects. Then it shifts to the tactical mechanics of finding roles most candidates never see. From the Ashby Google search hack to VC job boards, staffing firm pipelines, and stealth startup cold outreach, the counterintuitive moves are the most useful ones here. If you're currently employed, the early chapters are for you. If you're already searching, skip ahead.
Why Getting Laid Off Is Always a Business Decision
Being laid off in 2025 wasn't rare. It was practically routine. Amazon cut thousands. Friends pinged Darrell with news of their own layoffs while he was still processing his own. He knew what was happening across the industry. He was prepared. And then it happened anyway, and prepared turned out not to mean what he thought it meant.
What comes next is something anyone who's been through it will recognize. Identity goes first. The role you've spent years building, the thing that answers "so what do you do?" at every party, just disappears overnight. Then the financial math kicks in. Darrell got 4 months of severance, which is a genuinely good outcome, and it still wasn't as much as it sounded like when he heard the number. But underneath all of it is the worst part: the replay loop. If only you'd been more visible. If only you'd taken a different project. If only you'd made that 1 relationship work. Darrell puts it plainly. Being laid off is a business decision, full stop, regardless of your performance, your visibility, or who liked you. The evidence arrived a few weeks later, when he found out that top performers across his entire organization had been cut, including his direct manager, someone who was by any measure visible, impactful, and doing everything right. When your boss gets laid off, there was nothing you could have done.
"If you've never been laid off before, you can't help but think it's your fault. The big feeling is: if only I had done something different, if only I was more visible, if only I had taken a different project. And that is just 100% not true. It is all business decisions."
Phil's been there. He's been let go in his own career and knows exactly how the severance window tricks you. You have a little runway, so you tell yourself you'll take a month to decompress before getting back into it.
That's the trap. The best advice Darrell got came from friends who had already navigated their own layoffs, and it was blunt: don't take a break. His instinct was to take a month off, maybe 2, then ease back in. The people who'd lived it told him something he didn't want to hear: it's going to take exactly that long just to get into pipelines. And while you're recovering, everyone else with the same resume and the same experience is making the same choice. You're competing against thousands of people who were also good at their jobs and also got laid off. Darrell ran full steam ahead instead. He ended up with 2 offers.
How quickly you start matters more than how long you prepared. The people who figure that out in the first 48 hours have a real structural advantage over everyone else grieving on their couch.
Key takeaway: Start your job search the week you're laid off. Reach out to friends who've been through it, get your materials ready, and get into pipelines immediately. Everyone else is planning to take a few weeks off first, and that gap is your only real competitive edge right now.
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Building Career Security Before You Need It
Most people don't think about their next job until they lose the current 1. Full-time employment gives you a title and a salary, but career security is something you build separately, independent of any employer. You have benefits, recurring income, and a professional identity anchored to a single org chart, and the company can end any of that without notice.
Here's how Phil thinks about it: an active network you can activate, something generating income outside your primary job, and a professional reputation that doesn't disappear when the org chart does. The companies that describe themselves as families are also the ones making headcount decisions when the numbers stop working. Your actual family is at home.
This leads to 3 strategies Phil argues everyone in martech should be pursuing whether or not they're actively looking. First: nurture your network. Second: follow your dream companies. Third: do something outside your 9 to 5, whether freelancing, a side project, or anything with even a small amount of income attached. These aren't strategies for when you're in trouble. They're strategies for ensuring you never are. Roles in martech and marketing ops are among the first cut when companies reduce overhead. Operators who treat their current employment as permanent are more exposed than they realize.
"I've always been a fan of this stoic concept called the pre-mortem. In good times, imagine the worst-case scenario and work out what you'd do. I had always thought: what would happen if I lost my job? I knew I had a big network. So I wasn't as worried. But for many people, networking isn't something you do regularly."
Key takeaway: Treat career security as a separate goal from job security. Map 3 building blocks: an active network, at least 1 income source outside your employer, and a professional identity that exists independent of your title. Start with whichever is weakest right now.
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Networking Before You Need Anyone's Help
The most common networking advice is to reach out when you're looking for work. Darrell's approach is the opposite: build and maintain relationships constantly, so the network already exists before you ever need it.
"I'm always asking for help. If you're figuring out how to integrate a tool, if you're figuring out why your database is so messed up, how are you not reaching out to people in a similar job and saying, hey, what are you doing? Because that, to me, is just a waste of time not to do that."
His entry point is the Stoic concept of the pre-mortem. In good times, imagine the worst case scenario and work out what you'd do. For Darrell, that meant regularly asking himself what would happen if he lost his job tomorrow. Because he'd been building across martech and marketing ops communities for years before his layoff, the answer was already in place. He acknowledges most people don't approach it this way.
What his version of ongoing networking looks like is less grand than the concep...